Cost of living moan & WWYD if your outgoings exceeded your income?

[Elvisola]

It's all very well though saying to cut back on food quality, takeaways, clothes shopping, days out etc but it allows for very little joy in life.

I find it depressing enough to spend the majority of our income on the mortgage, utilities etc without having to try and be frugal at the same time.

It makes me laugh that the government complain nobody is spending us out of the recession when so many people are just trying to basically live day by day.

[kelly]

I have an all in one interest only mortgage. ATM, we have made the decision to pay interest only. Its the only way we can survive.

Whats crippling us at the minute is csa. I know I shouldn't bitch, but it really does hurt our finances to pay over £400 a month to a family with nearly double our income, and none of the childcare or housing costs. And that tax credits don't consider csa, so even though our actual take home is 3/4 less, we don't qualify for any help under the new rules.

In our case it's not so much the csa but the fact that we pay all the costs of travelling for picking up/dropping off which is the best part of £250 a month with the cost of fuel at the moment. It's also one of those things that can't be cut back on, there's no saving to make and it is bound to increase.

[Dancing Queen]

It's all very well though saying to cut back on food quality, takeaways, clothes shopping, days out etc but it allows for very little joy in life.

Totaly agree. Last night I was doing my Asda shop online (stops me picking up extras, gong to give Aldi & Lidl a try too), and I was questioning myself over a 57p bottle of dandelion & burdock (my pregnancy wine replacement!!)

[bubbasweet]

I agree that everything is so much more expensive in the last few months let alone this time last year. Food shopping particularly. To be fair we've not modified our shopping habits (will be once I get my arse in gear!) but buying what we did a year ago seems to be costing us twice as much now We've never been frivolous spenders as such, just never had to really pay attention to what we're spending and lately I've been looking at the bank balances versus the bills and starting to be concerned (I know, get out the world's teeniest violin ).

I do wonder if prices have been kept artificially low for too long (supermarkets etc.) and it all just became unsustainable?

Or perhaps we've just had it too good for too long? Easy credit, big government spending (as a country we've defo become used to that!), rampant consumerism, booming property prices (that definitely hasn't helped matters - many people have mortgages at 5 times a joint income, rather than 4 times one income.) My mum says to always borrow as much as you can afford when it comes to property, but what we're allowed to borrow twice as much lately versus when she first bought property.

[Queenie]

It's tough alright. Last year DH sold some land and that was enough to clear all of our debts and make things easier around the time Fred was born, but shortly afterwards he was put on a three day week, so there is still a huge financial strain.
There are no buses where I live (well, okay, so there is one a day, which you have to phone and book in the morning!) so a car is essential. Fuel costs are higher than on the mainland, and the price of electricity is horrendous. I'm very glad indeed that the warmer weather is here because I couldn't afford to heat the house properly at the moment.
So far, I've managed by making a strict weekly budget and sticking to it, cooking extra for each meal and freezing it (when I was little and we had guests, my dad used to joke about chucking another bucket of water in the stew- now I understand exactly what he meant!). I've gone back to work because I can't afford maternity leave, and DH will be fishing three days a week once I've finished mending his creels (not a euphemism, some of his lobster pots have holes in them!). Unfortunately the market for lobsters is *tries to find polite term* badly affected by the recession, but it should help, and if the prices get really low, we'll just eat the lobsters.
I work from home so we have no childcare costs, but I also have no freedom. At the moment I just feel like I'm doing what women have always done- knuckling down and getting on with it. But I'm very aware that we are one misfortune away from total financial disaster. The car broke 6 weeks ago (a thingy boke which broke another thingy, which broke another etc) and luckily it was covered by the warranty, because it needed a new engine and 5 weeks worth of tea-drinking and teeth-sucking to fix. Were it not for the warranty, me and mine would have to walk a very long way or stay in for the foreseeable future.
Rising tide of panic anyone?

[Roseyposey]

If you are finding bills the difficult thing, have you considered a water meter? When DH was made redundant (twice) I went through all of our bills and made savings where I could. There is an online quiz thing where you enter your details (number of people vs number of bedrooms, dishwasher etc etc) and it tells you if you'd save money. We did as we have 4 beds and 3 people. Its free to change and free to change back if it doesn't work out. We have saved a great deal doing this.

Also if you have i-phones/i-pads and any other technology that you could do without, have you though about changing these? I have an oldish mobile that costs me £10 per month.

[Northern Angel]

The only thing I can think of is that Lidl and Aldi nappies are really good and work out cheaper than the main brands even when they're on offer. But sorry Mrs Cheeso I don't think would help you as your LO's are older. The other product I've found in Lidl which is wonderful is their moisturiser. I downgraded from Clinique to Boot's own brand a few years ago and I think the Lidl moisturiser is better than Boots (but really I want my Clinique back )

Overall, I do find this all a bit grim I was liking shopping at Lidl where I was living previously; it was full of old bids and immigrants, the staff were nice and it had a pleasant atmosphere. But I went to Aldi this morning and it was miserable. Hey ho

[Peony]

Food has definately gone up over the year. This time last year we rang around all our service providers and I was making a huge effort to get our weekly shop to around £70. Now the same shop is costing me £80/£90 every week and petrol costs on top.

I am with Elvisola though on not denying yourself inexpensive treats so long as you weigh up how much happier it will make you - I'm spending smarter this year and going for price per smile (patent pending ).

[Jelly]

We are now selling a lot of stuff we don't use / need to make money for anything we spend. DH used music magpie to sell some of his CD / DVD collections. CD/DVDs are usually pain to sell on eBay for the little money you make but music magpie take the bulk of it & offers reasonably good price.

I used Music Magpie after reading your post, and got £45 out of it. I had about 90 odd DVDs and CDs that we hadn't watched or listened to in, well... I don't know how long. It took about an hour to enter them all and box them up, and another 2 weeks before I had notification they were sending a cheque.

I am really happy. At an average of 50p each it doesn't seem like the effort, but £45 for an hour or 2 is a lot more satisfactory I listed things with a higher value on Amazon but they haven't all sold so I may sent to Music Magpie as well.

I much preferred to it eBay, not just because it was faster, but because I didn't have pay for postage or send them individually. I was a bit unsure whether to try them, having read some really bad reviews of them online, so I only sent the stuff of little value.

[donna-j]

I keep meaning to do this. I want to copy some over to itunes first though.

We had a nasty shock last week when we thought OH's overtime was going to disappear. It is worth £500/month and makes the difference between making ends meet or not. Thankfully it is getting phased out over 3 years so not as bad as we thought. I went into overdrive and got two new clients though so that should help.